A2 N THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, OCTOBER 8, 2019
In rural Barnard, Vt., the local general
store was the only place you could get a
copy of The New York Times or The Bos-
ton Globe. That was until the day last year
that Barnard General Store announced
that it would stop selling copies of out-of-
town newspapers.
On the local listserv, a sort of online
forum, residents of the town shared every
opinion they had on the decision. They
criticized the general store for cutting off
the community from print news. Some
waxed poetic about the important differ-
ences between reading the news online
and in print. A few even said that people
who read The Times were snobs.
The cries were heard, eventually making
their way to Oliver Szott, a budding entre-
preneur who had previously sold craft
sodas at the farmers market, as well as his
own electronic music online. After some
suggestions and assistance from his
mother and neighbor, Oliver, 14, opened up
shop as the town’s newest, and only, pur-
veyor of out-of-town newspapers.
“I’ve read and flipped through a bunch of
papers over time,” Oliver said. “Because of
how my dad would read the paper, that
kind of made me have an appreciation for
print newspapers.”
Print circulation for American newspa-
pers is in decline. In 2018, weekday circula-
tion dropped 12 percent from the previous
year, while digital circulation rose by 6
percent during the same period, according
to the Pew Research Center. The figures
for Sunday circulation were similar. Some
publications have slashed the number of
days they produce and deliver print pa-
pers, and retailers like Starbucks have
stopped selling newspapers altogether.
In February 2018, the Barnard General
Store announced that it would no longer
carry copies of The Times or any other
out-of-town publications because of a price
increase by the store’s out-of-town newspa-
pers distributor, White Mountain News.
Under the new pricing, the general store
would have had to pay the full retail cost of
the papers to White Mountain News, in
addition to the delivery fee.
By August, Oliver had drawn up a plan
for filling the demand by paying White
Mountain News the full retail cost for the
papers plus delivery, then selling them forretail plus a dollar surcharge. This would
save passionate readers a drive of over 15
minutes to a neighboring town to pick up a
copy of The Times.
“This is what happens in remote Amer-
ica, where entrepreneurs take hold,” Mark
Weitzel, the vice president of circulation
operations at The Times, said about Oli-
ver’s business.
Oliver admitted that his foray into print
news wasn’t driven by any romantic senti-
ments of newspapers or personal connec-
tions to the industry. Rather, he figured he
could at least learn through this experi-
ment how to better communicate with
customers and suppliers, as well as how to
notify potential customers about a prod-
uct’s availability, as was the case with The
1619 Project, a Times initiative that exam-
ines slavery’s legacy in America.
“When people heard about the special
edition,” Oliver said, “some people who
were not my regular customers showed up
because they knew I was the newspaper
guy.”
In the beginning, Oliver sold copies of
The Times, The Boston Globe and The Wall
Street Journal six days a week at a local
church, pulling in a couple of regular week-
day clients, and 14 regular customers plus
walk-ins on Sunday.
Later that fall, he relocated his business
to his family’s home. But by April this year,
weekday sales were slumping. So Oliver,
too, cut back. He now sells the Sunday
paper from 8:30 to 10:30 a.m., with only
The Times and The Globe for sale.
“A lot more people were upset about the
discontinuance of the service at the gen-
eral store than read the paper,” Ted
Williamson, a longtime customer, said.
Every weekend now, after assembling
the dropped-off papers and their inserts,
Oliver leaves stacks of the Sunday papers
on the end of his family’s small, white-
fenced porch. Although he monitors pick-
ups through the windows while eating
breakfast or doing homework, there’s a box
for people to drop off $7 for a paper using
the honor system.
He sells around six copies of The Times
and one of The Globe each week, which
translates to $2 or $3 profit a week on
average. Plus, Oliver’s mother, Pamela
Fraser, said: “Every once in a while, he’ll
get a tip.”Inside The Times
THE STORY BEHIND THE STORYOliver Szott, 14, sells The Times from his porch in Barnard, Vt., to a loyal group of customers.ADAM GLANZMAN FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESAn Entrepreneur and His Newsstand
By MATTHEW SEDACCACORRECTIONS ACROSSWORD COBITUARIES A21, A
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